


Matrilineal

by keysmash



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: 14valentines, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-11
Updated: 2010-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:26:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keysmash/pseuds/keysmash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deanna's parents took on an apprentice every few years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Matrilineal

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for 403. Written for 14valentines.

Deanna's parents took on an apprentice every few years. Family members got first priority, so she'd grown up with one cousin or another in the spare bedroom, next to hers, but the summer she turned sixteen, old enough to finally begin her own training, Lissa Grey, a pastor's daughter from three towns over and an utter stranger, moved in with little more than a suitcase and a pillow.

The first task was always altering clothes, adding pockets and padding and straps, and Deanna's mother set them to it the morning after Lissa arrived. Deanna knew they were meant to work alone — everyone else, before Lissa, had disappeared into the room and not come out, except for meals, for days — but she didn't make it past dinner that first day before gathering up her sewing things and knocking quietly at Lissa's door.

"Do you mind if I come in?" she asked, when Lissa pulled the door open. Deanna glanced over her shoulder but the house was quiet; her parents were usually outside, dealing with the animals, in this part of the afternoon.

"If you want," Lissa said after a moment, and let Deanna inside. She'd been sewing on the bed, leaning against the headboard, and she scooted over enough for Deanna to sit with her.

"You've really never done any of this before?" Lissa asked, showing her the pockets she was stitching into place along the inner hem of a skirt. Deanna leaned down and flipped up the skirt she was wearing just slightly, showing Lissa the unchanged seam, and in the process, the her knees.

"They wouldn't let me until I was old enough," she said, then smoothed her skirt back over her shins. "I've hardly gotten to do anything. I expect I know as much as you, about any of this."

She shook her head. "I wouldn't say that. I don't know much of this at all. If it wasn't for the war, your parents probably wouldn't have taken me."

"No, they take on girls all the time," she said. "Half my cousins have come through here."

"They have?"

"Family business," Deanna said, and bent her head back to her work.

They sewed together for a while. Lissa put her skirt aside first and picked up a pair of trousers to alter next. Her father had sent her over with a good hunting knife, with a blade about as long as Deanna's hand, and Lissa used it, sheathed, as a pattern for the pocket she'd be adding to the inside of the pants, near her waist. Lissa's stiches were both even and fast, where Deanna could only ever manage to do one at a time. She wondered if being here was Lissa's own idea, or if her parents sent her over her own objections.

"What was it like to grow up around this?" Lissa asked, around a mouthful of straight pins.

Dean shrugged. "It was a long tme before I realize that not everyone lives like this." She gestured to the knife. "But I'm happy we do. I've been asking Mama to start teaching me for years now, but she's made me wait until now."

"My mother made me wait, too," Lissa said. "Father wanted to send me last year, but she wanted me to finish school first."

Deanna shook her head, remembering the arguments she'd had with her own mother about that same topic. "When I have children, I'm not going to make them wait like this," she said. "It's hardly fair."

Lissa hummed next to her and they kept working. Eventually, Deanna finished her skirt and moved to her own pair of trousers, cutting a pocket for the knife that would finally be riding safe at her side.


End file.
